I Went!

I went to the doctor. I described my life. She said there’s no need to be embarrassed. Anxiety is very common. She thinks I have general anxiety disorder, which I was going to argue against, but then, like, I can’t use the stairs without having a panic attack, so I guess I’m arranging my life a lot so that I don’t notice that I have this thing that affects me all the time, which is nuts, but okay.

So, she’s going to do what she can for me, which is basically sertraline every day and alprazolam for when I’m having a panic attack, so that I don’t, you know, get stranded in rural Tennessee again.

If this doesn’t help–though I am wondering how I’ll judge “help;” I guess I’ll have to wait and  see–then I get to go to a psychiatrist who specializes in anxiety who can either prescribe other drugs or work with me to develop ways to retrain my brain or both.

But I had to laugh when she was describing all the ways these drugs would help me because it sure as shit seemed like I could get the same effect from becoming a pothead.

Anyway, I was embarrassed and it was horrible, but it was also fine and I’m glad I gutted up and did it.

But I also want to say, just for the sake of thoroughness and trying to understand myself, that I think I was avoiding this because, at some level, I have internalized my dad’s belief that some forms of mental stuff is just because you’re soft and a baby. And I am soft and a baby, so I kept waiting to work up the strength of will to get over it.

But I told the doctor, too, that the hardest part about the panic attacks–which you guys know–is the feeling that I can’t integrate what my senses tell me–everything is fine, look, you are not falling–with the sense that I am, in fact, falling and going to die. And, you know, obviously, I don’t want to die, especially not in a really unpleasant way, so if all it took were willing myself to be better, I would have done it before now.

So, that’s that. Victory is mine. I have a mental illness, which I kind of knew, considering the panic attacks, but I also got to be in denial about because I never had a doctor say it to me. The upside is that I guess this means I don’t have to break myself of the habit of saying crazypants or lunatic or nuts or whatever, because now I’m just reclaiming the terms, which is good, because I can’t give up lunatic, because I love the idea of the moon reaching in you and pulling at you and making you do things. The moon, the inescapable hypnotist.

Ha, I should write a story called “The Inescapable Hypnotist.” Not tonight, though.

Anxiety

Today I get to go talk to my doctor about my panic attacks. I am, as you can imagine, very anxious about it. I’m hugely embarrassed, just in general, and I am mortified that, as a part of talking about my general anxiety, I have to thread the needle through talking about how stressful it is that people make jokes about people wanting to shoot me while also not being paranoid about being shot.

Like, how is this a life? Why would someone do this?

The Butcher wants me to get a gun “in case” and that’s making me more stressed. And yet, I admit, it’s tempting.

I try not to miss Sadie much or at least not to dwell on the missing of her much, because dead is dead and it’s not good for either of us to stand too long at that door. But I did feel a level of “Sure, try to fuck with me. That will go well for you.” when she was around that, bless his heart, I don’t feel with old Sonnyboy here, who is sad today because it was too cold this morning to practice his boss hill-rolling skills.